LSO ST LUKES, LONDON, AVAILABLE ONLINE In a concert offered as Covid consolation and commemorating the Greek revolution, Simon Rattle oversaw lyrical Berg and exhilarating Schubert Many, I suspect, would have preferred to hear Simon Rattle’s first London Symphony Orchestra concert of 2021 under different circumstances. Scheduled for the Barbican with a socially distanced audience, it was moved online after lockdown, and recorded in LSO St Lukes on the original concert date of 7 January, days before the LSO temporarily suspended rehearsals and recording and before Rattle announced his much discussed decision to leave London and take up the principal conductorship of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2023. “We hope our music helps dispel some of the gloom of the last year,” Rattle announced before the performance. It didn’t quite, as far as I was concerned, though it was superb. The programme – Berg’s Violin Concerto with Leonidas Kavakos and Schubert’s “Great” Symphony, No 9 in C Major, D944 – remained unchanged: the concert was dedicated, meanwhile, to this year’s bicentenary of the start of the Greek revolution against Ottoman rule and the participation of the British philhellenes within it, so the evening began with the Greek national anthem. Continue reading...
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